Facebook introduces Notify to alert you of breaking news

Leon Hitchens

4 years ago

Want to receive notifications about breaking news, top stories, and weather reports all from leading sources like People, The Verge, Breaking News, Buzzfeed, and at least another hundred sources. The notifications will appear on your lock screen with a short description, and it will expand to feature the full article in Facebook’s app browser. Of course, Facebook made it easy to share the notification with your friends or family, and you’re even able to save the notification if your busy.

Notify is available in the U.S. on the iOS app store now for your notification overload pleasures. The app sounds like something that would perfectly fit into Twitter’s model, and with a massive amount of news organizations reporting on Twitter it sounds like a fit. Facebook though has been working on relationships with media organizations with Instant Articles, video players, and now notify. Facebook is looking more appealing for media organizations to have a large presence on the site, while Twitter is becoming less appealing with stagnate user growth.

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The app sounds like a terrible idea from the start. I already have enough notifications from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a dozen other apps including Periscope. Users are already overwhelmed with notifications from everywhere, and Facebook thinking users want more is almost insane. I can understand wanting to get notifications about a breaking news affecting the country, but beyond that no one wants to be bombarded with news about the latest trailer or what a celebrity is wearing.

I think Facebook Notify is going to be notification overload, but I liked to know what you think! Tell us in the comments below what you think about Notify, and if you’d download the app to be alerted to the latest and greatest.